


cut me down to size

by alderations



Series: Whumptober/Mechtober 2020 [3]
Category: The Mechanisms (Band)
Genre: Angst, Body Horror, Decapitation, Dismemberment, Execution, Gen, Gore, Gun Violence, Hurt No Comfort, Public Humiliation, Self-Hatred, Violence, Whump, Whumptober 2020, brian gets beat up and feels sad for 1000 words asmr, its not really as bad as the tags sound just covering my bases, robot gore, the hanged man corrodes...
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-04
Updated: 2020-10-04
Packaged: 2021-03-08 01:14:05
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,235
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26807167
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alderations/pseuds/alderations
Summary: It’s wrong to hurt people.It’s wrong to hurt people, even if it’s an accident, even if they hurt you at the same time. The voice in Brian’s head is his own, but the circuitry looping those words between the switch in his back and the growing fuzz in his brain feels as alien as it ever has. The face of the man in front of him tells him, in no uncertain terms, that he’s hurt him, and hurt merits punishment on Fort Galfridian.(Whumptober Day 3: manhandled/held at gunpoint)
Series: Whumptober/Mechtober 2020 [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1950916
Comments: 11
Kudos: 77
Collections: Whumptober 2020





	cut me down to size

**Author's Note:**

> hello! this is lowkey kinda a vent fic and includes some pretty graphic (mostly robot) gore, specifically involving dismemberment, decapitation, and body parts being destroyed. i didnt really linger on any of it, but please exercise caution if gore/body horror isn't your thing!

It’s wrong to hurt people.

It’s wrong to hurt people, even if it’s an accident, even if they hurt you at the same time. The voice in Brian’s head is his own, but the circuitry looping those words between the switch in his back and the growing fuzz in his brain feels as alien as it ever has. The face of the man in front of him tells him, in no uncertain terms, that he’s hurt him, and hurt merits punishment on Fort Galfridian.

That sends him into another feedback loop.  _ You hurt him → you are punished → they are right to punish you → you are hurt → you hurt him.  _ He can barely think around those words, and he certainly can’t remember what he even  _ did  _ outside of the word ‘hurt.’ That’s all that matters, the feedback reassures him. Tears trace his cheeks unbidden as the man he hurt turns away and hands him over to the curious crowd outside.

The crowd, of course, becomes a mob.

They’ve seen ghouls before—when they make it into the light, at least—but no one on Fort Galfridian has ever seen a metal man, and the terror on their faces speaks for itself. Brian doesn’t struggle when they drag him to the center of town. He doesn’t want to hurt anyone else.

Justice is delivered by bullets and scorching heat here, and when neither of those options have a lasting effect, they get inventive. With a horse tied to each of his arms and his body nailed to the base of the gallows, they have little trouble ripping his arms from his torso and scattering them across the wasteland. Brian keeps his limbs rigid and still, denying every urge to fight back in self-defense, but he can’t stop himself from screaming. His reaction is enough to encourage them, and they do the same with his legs, then his head, and he cries all the way out to the lonesome ditch in the desert rust where they drop him at last.

The next morning, an intact Brian lies at the foot of the gallows. Instead of  _ false prophet  _ and  _ heretic,  _ the townspeople scream  _ demon, devil, monster. _

And then they try again. This time, instead of brute force, they use screwdrivers and pliers and wrenches to rip back his plating and cut out his circuitry. They make a mess of it, shouting every time blood or mechanolymph gushes from severed pipes, and yet they manage to skirt the switch on his back, even when curious eyes find it and question him. “It’s morality,” he gasps with what remains of his vocal system. “Means justify ends. I cannot do anything immoral, no matter the cost.”

“And if we flip it?” the sheriff snarls down at him.

Brian lets all his defiance concentrate in his glare, even if he can’t lie, can’t lead this man to his own demise. “Ends justify means.”

It genuinely surprises Brian that no one tries to flip it, just out of curiosity. How are they to know that he has to tell the truth, that he can’t force himself to hurt them of his own free will? He will have hundreds of years to agonize over this moment, but as it happens, no one dares to try. They decapitate him again, stringing his head from the gallows and ripping his throat apart one wire at a time, until the remains of his tongue and trachea and tendons hang below his chin like a clump of tangled necklaces.

This cycle repeats for a week, culminating in a final day where they actually dig deep enough into his circuitry to find his heart and destroy it in front of his eyes. He can tell that they’re terrified by the discovery, that a robot with a human heart implies things they can’t face in good conscience, and Brian doesn’t blame them. Disconnected from his body, Brian can’t feel the fingers digging into his heart and pulling the chambers apart with a harsh  _ rip _ of collagen, but his all-too-human mind fills in the gaps. 

The next morning, Brian wakes up whole and prepares for another day of Promethean punishment, only to find the barrel of a gun between his eyes. “Don’t take this the wrong way,” he croaks, “but I thought we established by now that guns don’t do much to me.”

“We have,” the sheriff hisses. “Still isn’t  _ fun  _ to be shot.”

Brian has to clear his throat before he can speak again; apparently the narrative finds it fitting to reassemble every piece of him that’s scattered to the winds at night, but it doesn’t bother to heal the parts of him that communicate. Figures. “No, it’s not. What do you want?”

“Get up.”

He opens his mouth to protest that he’s still nailed to the fucking gallows, but when he looks down, the (enormous) nail is gone. “Alright, I’ll—there’s no need for the gun, really. I’m still not going to hurt anyone.”

The look on the sheriff’s face makes it clear that it has more to do with hurting Brian than anyone else at this point.

Brian pushes himself up on wobbling arms, then slowly rises to his feet, leaving the last scraps of his shirt on the ground. Before he can speak again, the highest-ranking men in the sheriff’s office grab his arms and, with one concerted effort, flip him face-down onto the ground.  _ Why bother making me stand up,  _ he tries to say, but it comes out as a whimper. He’s so tired. Since when can a robot body  _ be  _ this tired? That question holds his focus, graciously dragging him down into his memories, while the men secure a thick chain to his ankle and hoist him up onto the gallows.

Because death by hanging means nothing to him, but immortality won’t save him from the humiliation.

For hundreds of years, Brian hangs. Most days it’s relatively peaceful, given that he’s in the center of town—people go about their business around him, and he makes no effort to reach out to them, knowing that they’ll only respond with violence. Every once in a while, the sheriff will come by to remind him of his place in Camelot, sometimes with words, but usually with weapons and calculated patience. One day, he strips off Brian’s faceplate and leaves his inner workings open to the drifting sand and scorching sun; the next week, he slashes the coolant lines in Brian’s wrists just to watch him bleed out in the only way he can. As the years pass, other people take their frustrations out on Brian, though it happens less often as they slowly forget his transgressions and, after a century or so, forget him altogether.

Brian cries a lot in those early days. Sometimes, he’s not sure if it’s due to his emotions, or just the strain on his systems from hanging upside down for so long, but either way, he feels the tear tracks across his temples start to corrode as months fade into years fade into centuries. Even after Mordred sends them careening into the sun, even after a millennium in the unbearable raging heat, his cheeks are streaked with green to remind him, every time he catches his reflection, of everything he failed to do.

No matter how many times his switch gets flipped, Brian isn’t sure that he’ll ever be able to forgive himself.

**Author's Note:**

> hello it's me, alder "no more writing at work for me" bitch. we are three (3) days into whumptober and i already dove headfirst into body horror gore city usa. this will almost certainly happen again, because my brain is full of horrific imagery that won't shut up, so if you're like "oh yippee al is writing something every day for a month gotta read all of them!" but you are not up for this kind of thing, please don't hold yourself to it!! that being said, i will uh. try not to write at work in the future, cuz customer service tends to, yknow, release the coiled violence that's inside of me.
> 
> aaaanyway. comment to tell me what the fuck is wrong with me, or start Brian Juice Discourse, or just share your thoughts and feelings? i live @alderations on tumblr please feel free to send writing prompts that will be addressed... in november, realistically. ily all.


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